Monday, January 26, 2009

It may seem a long way away, and when other merchants are thinking of hearts and white and red, the mask makers think of Mardi Gras.

It's almost time again to don your purple and green and gold, bake up your King Cakes and get with your krewe!Although the day itself falls on the 24th, some folks do have to work on the weekdays, and so we'll celebrate a bit early. It also allows for the possibility of RL revels!

The theme is obvious, if you come in green, purple and gold you certainly won't be out of place. However, if you want to depart from that to be utterly fabulous, you're more than welcome. Just keep in mind that this is a formal affair, and keep that leather harness tucked away for your boudoir escapades.

When assembling your costume, please keep these rules in mind. For the sake of all of us, if each party-goer abides by them we should all be able to dance and camera around without molasses.

Please keep your prim attachments in total to 200 or less.

You can double check how close you are to the limit by using build, and holding down shift to click each item you're wearing. The build window will display the collected total of those prims.

Streamline your AO, or leave it at home

Nobody likes looking like a noob while being a wallflower. However, if you don't plan to dance, fill a veritably lag free, low prim ZHAOII with your two or three favorite stands. You don't need a walk or any other anim if you're not moving. Otherwise, just go without.

No particles, and no listening scriptsTurn that bling off, and make sure you don't have any items on you that respond to chat commands. Try to avoid scripted items at all if possible.

As always, there will be a costume contest, determined by vote, to vie for the title of King and Queen of Mardi Gras. Two previously unreleased, themed masks will be awarded as the prizes, along with 1500L each. I will also have the 150L fee to join the Masque group raffled off to the members, the winner receiving 5000L.

Make sure you join the group early, do not put it off because you don't have a group slot. Spots will go surprisingly fast, and I will refuse to add a single soul more than 50. I will, however, have a waiting list just in case anyone leaves the group, which has happened before. There will still be hope to get in even if you hear about it too late.

This may very well be either the last party held in the current event hall, or the first party held in the new one. As I'm working on renovating my sim, it's very possible that we'll be breaking in the new hall with this bash! I'll be providing a SLURL when the position is certain.

Masks are required, but a freebie mask will be included, which is the mask shown in the invite. I know the costume rules are tough to follow, especially when it's so tempting to go for the excess, but I have the utmost faith in your creativity to be able to work around the limitations, and flourish. I can't wait to see you there.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Ok, so yes I'm a tease. The reason I didn't say what my breakthrough was was because it's incredibly simple and I'm just embarassed. But I might as well share, at the jeopardy of actually proving to the world that I have almost no clue what I'm doing.

So basically what I never knew how to do, was work on more than one object at a time in Zbrush. Anyone who's familiar with Zbrush... shut yo mouth >:( So this means whenever I wanted to make two pieces of a mask that fit together, I'd have to work on each separately, then upload to see how they looked, then go back and edit them both to try and make them fit better. Then I'd upload it again and again until it finally looked right. That's how I made my boots, all of my masks, jewelry etc, each piece individually and completely independent from each other. No longer! It turns out that in about two clicks, I can work on any number of integrated pieces at once, all together. So yes, that was very embarrassing.

So one of the perks of my new found ability is being able to build a mask right onto an avatar's head. Like this! Can you believe I've never been able to do this before?

Divis is very different from my other masks, as it's actually made from torii, not a sphere. It has eye holes, not just eye wells, and obviously it's made from two prims. This means people who have had problems with fitting my masks to their faces will find this one a breeze... no nose to worry about, no disappearing eyes, and it should be easily rotated to fit.

Since it's two prims, I made it so each prim can change texture independently so you can have one side be one color, or another, or even invisible if you'd like to show off some neat eye makeup :)

I think you can expect a few more divided masks like this one in the future!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I made a break through with my sculpting. I'm finally able to do something I've been wanting to do for a year or more, and it's so incredibly simple that I'm incredibly embarrassed I didn't figure it out sooner.

But it just made things a lot easier for me. Perhaps there shall be a few releases here and there :)

Work is still going on with my model/mockups as Miriel finishes architectural sculpts for me. I'm also working on something for Shir, I'll explain that more when I figure out what I'm doing. Just wanted to share my "I'm an idiot for doing things the really hard way" revelation and give you a status report :)

Monday, January 12, 2009

As I mentioned earlier I'm currently working on rebuilding my sim. You won't be seeing any changes until much later (I'm sure I'll mention them), but it is going to be taking up my creativity, productivity, and of course time, for the next month and a half. At least, that's my estimate, and we all know how those things go.

I'm sure as I work, I'll reach pitfalls and obstacles and I'll want to do something different for a while, so that means there might be a release or two to keep you guys happy for a bit. But the main point of this post is to say... hang in there. There will probably be a release drought for a while.

I also want to mention that I applied and got added to the Fashion Feed of SL, which means that every post I make will be posted in a major fashion feed. It does make me feel a bit more self conscious about writing rambling posts or small substance-less updates, so I might be a little slow to post until I have something I feel is worth sharing with the world. I might also be making those little "I'm still alive, this is what I worked on today" posts with a "what I wore while I was working on this darn thing" section, just to be interesting :D

Today I burned through what must have been ten ear tone requests. I think it's time for some revisions, I might be combining the "proprietary" skin options (the TRAP and Aether collections) with the Drow and just make a "Fantasy" skin tone collection. It would certainly make things less confusing. I also have a very large number of skins I'm accumulating in the Naturals collection from various popular skin makers, and I think I could just stick those in there too.

Any vendor revisions I'll be doing will be for the sim opening/unveiling. And by the way, I don't plan on closing the sim for any longer than three days. I'll be assembling all the architecture in the sky beforehand, so all of the actual building should be done when I close. From there, it'll be like playing in a big doll's house where I get to arrange and place everything.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

It was simply scintillating seeing a steady stream of sylvan sylphs strutting their stunning spiky spirits. There certainly was no lack of fabulous personalities, and I'm happy to say I can eat my words. I had plenty of pictures to choose from, but three folks especially just leaped out at me.

(make sure you click on these, my blog clipped them)

Damn imposing indeed. Cerdwin Flanagan (Blu282 on Flickr) definitely got my attention. Great outfit, great picture, and he wears them as nonchalantly as a ball cap.

Polly Pavlova is a friend of mine, but I have to admit I'd be more biased to ignore this beautiful submission from her. She looks like a creature you've just startled as you were reaching for a sip of water in the wilderness. Just lovely, and very primal.

My personal favorites were by Freyja Sinister. She submitted another, but this one showed the antlers better, and I liked the feel of mysticism. It almost seems like it could be Tarot art for The Hierophant.

A few other pictures I really enjoyed, they were just very cool outfits and ways to wear them, but didn't have the same sort of "o.o" factor:

The three winners will be getting a copy of the Lumina antlers (or 1750L refunds)and everyone I mentioned in this post will be getting a special pair of horns I made especially for myself :)

I want to say thank you to everyone who sent in submissions, I love seeing how you guys wear my things, and based on this I don't think this will be the last Flickr contest I do. So if you didn't win anything this time, you'll be getting another chance later :)

I sent out a white version of my merry hat to my group members tonight, so if your im's or notices get capped, make sure you pluck that out of the Masqueraderie notice history.

Tomorrow I'll be taking the Odocoleinae Lumina antlers down, at 10pmSLT. So you have until then to nab them, and then they'll be gone forever, and your only chance at getting a pair will be some opportunistic fan who nabbed twenty copies and will be sitting on them until he can sell them for triple their original price. (hint, if you have the money, be that fan ;)

(your last chance! posted for the benefit of the feeds who missed the picture last time)

It's also your last chance to grab my friend hya's (silent sparrow) matching outfit that she created. She did a special recolor of her Maida Suite because she wanted to match. I'm not sure exactly how long it will be out, but her sign says Jan 1st also.

Oh, yes, and I'll be announcing the winner of the Odocoleinae Challenge tomorrow, and if some people forgot to submit their photos to the Flickr group today, I'll be checking the queue tomorrow before I pick winners ;)

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Second Life is an online community set in a 3D, game-like environment. It allows everyone to create content, from clothing to buildings, whatever you can imagine. It's a versatile medium for artists, and a place to meet people and form communities. There are any number of places to explore, games to play, and things to be.